Educators From The United States

"It was Homer who gave laws to the artist."

"When men differ in any matter of belief, let them meet each other manfully."

"The church is a major bureaucracy, and major bureaucracies are disobedient to the gospel."

"According to a University of South Carolina study, violence in America rose 42 percent during the Vietnam War. This is hardly surprising. Our leaders are lawless, so why not we? If the government threatens other countries with the bomb, why not threaten one another with handguns? If our leaders are raping the planet, why not our neighbors? Our leaders create a climate of fear and violence. Why do they appear shocked when Americans kill, rob, and maim one another?"

"We Christians forget (if we ever learned) that attempts to redress real or imagined injustice by violent means are merely another exercise in denial — denial of God and her nonviolence towards us, denial of love of neighbor, denial of laws essential to our being."

"The Biblical view of the law, the courts, and the state is profoundly radical. The Bible looks upon the state as a kind of rebellious artifice; it is spurious, a human creation in rebellion against God. In the Old Testament, when the first state is proposed in the person of Saul, the first King of Israel, God tells the prophet Samuel that this project spells rejection of God. The state and its legislature are in rebellion against, or rejection of, God. Its courts are a human fabrication, cannot promote justice and peace; they are founded in violence, and legalize violence. The state holds together through police power, against the citizenry. The state, conceived in violence, and backed by violence, will never achieve true peace."

"Then came a time I can hardly describe, a section underground. A bird trapped in a sewer, wings beating against the ceiling in that dark wet place, while the city rumbled on overhead. Her name was Lost. Her name was Nobody's Daughter."

"People were just like that. We couldn't even see each other, just the shadows moving, pushed by unseen winds."

"How it was. How it was the earth could open up under you and swallow you whole, close above you as if you never were. Like Persephone snatched by the god. The ground opened up and out he came, sweeping her into the black chariot. Then down they plunged, under the ground, into darkness, and the earth closed over her head, and she was gone, as if she had never been."

"Don't attach yourself to anyone who shows you the least bit of attention because you're lonely. Loneliness is the human condition. No one is ever going to fill that space. The best you can do is know yourself... know what you want."

"I had already seen more of the world, its beauty and misery and sheer surprise, than they could hope or fear to perceive."

"Without my wounds, who was I? My scars were my face, my past was my life. It wasn't like I didn't know where all this remembering got you, all that hunger for beauty and astonishing cruelty and ever-present-loss."

"This was an artist's stare, attentive to detail, taking in the truth without preconceptions. It was a stare that didn't turn away when I stared back, but was startled to find itself returned."

"Books are the tools of both teacher and pupil. A library is perhaps the most important adjunct of instruction. It is open to all and is used by all. In every department of science throughout the world the keenest intellects are at work, seeking for solutions to the unending series of problems that present themselves in the physical and natural world . 'Light, more light,' said the dying philosopher, and the longing of the world is but the echo of his last faint cry. To do our duty and to give reply to the many demands made upon us requires all the light and all the experience of other minds, wheresoever they may be found."

"He was an excellent disciplinarian, a splendid teacher, and a man looking for the good in everybody, which he invariably found and brought out. Great in his goodness of character and life, and of charming personality, he left a lasting impress on the annals of this institution."

"Our examination of computer viruses leads us to the conclusion that they are very close to what we might define as "artificial life." Rather than representing a scientific achievement, this probably represents a flaw in our definition."

"That which is not yet known comes out of that which is not yet here."

"It cannot be emphasized too strongly that playing can pull many a director and cast out of a tight spot, freeing all of them from the fear-producing trap of memorizing, characterizing and interpreting. This playing draws upon a very important, almost forgotten, little understood or utilized, and greatly maligned life-giving force --- passion!"

"Play touches and stimulates vitality, awakening the whole person - mind, body, intelligence and creativity, spontaneity and intuition."

"Games develop personal techniques and skills necessary for the game itself, through playing. Skills are developed at the very moment a person is having all the fun and excitement playing a game has to offer--this is the exact time one is truly open to receive them."

"Through spontaneity we are re-formed into ourselves. It creates an explosion that for the moment frees us from handed-down frames of reference, memory choked with old facts and information and undigested theories and techniques of other people's findings. Spontaneity is the moment of personal freedom when we are faced with reality, and see it, explore it and act accordingly. In this reality the bits and pieces of ourselves function as an organic whole. It is the time of discovery, of experiencing, of creative expression."

"Everyone can act. Everyone can improvise. Anyone who wishes to can play in the theater and learn to become 'stage-worthy.' We learn through experience and experiencing, and no one teaches anyone anything. This is as true for the infant moving from kicking and crawling to walking as it is for the scientist with his equations. If the environment permits it, anyone can learn whatever he chooses to learn; and if the individual permits it, the environment will teach him everything it has to teach. 'Talent' or 'lack of talent' have little to do with it."

"Usenet is like a herd of performing elephants with diarrhea -- massive, difficult to redirect, awe-inspiring, entertaining, and a source of mind-boggling amounts of excrement when you least expect it."

"Don't sweat it -- it's not real life. It's only ones and zeroes."

"People don't seem to think before posting, they are purposely rude, they blatantly violate copyrights, they crosspost everywhere, use 20 line signature files, and do basically every other thing the postings (and common sense and common courtesy) advise not to. Regularly, there are postings of questions that can be answered by the newusers articles, clearly indicating that they aren't being read. "Sendsys" bombs and forgeries abound. People rail about their "rights" without understanding that every right carries responsibilities that need to be observed too, not least of which is to respect others' rights as you would have them respect your own. Reason, etiquette, accountability, and compromise are strangers in far too many newsgroups these days."

"At the least, even if (my farewell post) is perceived as self-indulgent garbage, it will fit right in with the rest of the Net."

"Questioning the status quo can result in banishment, imprisonment, ridicule or being burned at the stake, depending on your era, your locale, and the sacred cows you wish to butcher."

"Secure web servers are the equivalent of heavy armored cars. The problem is, they are being used to transfer rolls of coins and checks written in crayon by people on park benches to merchants doing business in cardboard boxes from beneath highway bridges. Further, the roads are subject to random detours, anyone with a screwdriver can control the traffic lights, and there are no police."

"The only truly secure system is one that is powered off, cast in a block of concrete and sealed in a lead-lined room with armed guards - and even then I have my doubts."

"You neither can nor should understand what it means. Listen, it comes without guitar, Neither in rags nor in any purple fashion. And there is nothing in it to comfort you."

"This poem is not addressed to you. You may come into it briefly, But no one will find you here, no one. You will have changed before the poem will."

"Between the lines it must have hurt To see the neighborhood go down, Your neighbor in his undershirt At dusk come out to mow his lawn."

"Merry the green, the green hill shall be merry. Hungry, the owlet shall seek out the mouse And Jack his Joan, but they shall never marryAnd snow shall fly, the big flakes fat and furry. Lonely, the traveler shall seek out the house, And Jack his Joan, but they shall never marry.Weary the soldiers go, and come back weary, Up a green hill and down the withered hill, And Jack from Joan, but they shall never marry."

"It does not seem to me that the evidence concerning the being of a God, and concerning immortality, is such as to enable us to assert anything in regard to either of these topics."

"The United States has lost her unique position as a leader in the progress of civilization and has taken up her place simply as one of the grasping and selfish nations of the present day."

""There never was a good war," said Franklin. There have indeed been many wars in which a good man must take part, and take part with grave gladness to die if need be, a willing sacrifice, thankful to give life for what is dearer than life, and happy that even by death in war he is serving the cause of peace. But if a war be undertaken for the most righteous end, before the resources of peace have been tried and proved vain to secure it, that war has no defense, it is a national crime."

"The voice of protest, of warning, of appeal is never more needed than when the clamor of fife and drum, echoed by the press and too often by the pulpit, is bidding all men fall in and keep step and obey in silence the tyrannous word of command. Then, more than ever, it is the duty of the good citizen not to be silent."

"Tommy locked his doors, armed his security system, replaced all the 9-volt batteries in his smoke detectors, made sure the gun in his dresser drawer was loaded, and went to bed where, before falling asleep, he recited a psalm from memory, with an emphasis on one line in particular: “yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for thou art with me . . .”"

"“Which was crazier, she wondered, seeing patterns when they weren’t there, or ignoring patterns when they obviously were?”"

"“Amos was the first child they’d taken in, adopted at age six through an accredited agency in the former Soviet Union. “"

"“He’d been fearless on the football field, but he couldn’t fight what he couldn’t see or understand. Suddenly, he wasn’t feeling fearless anymore.”"

"“He turned his head, reacted in a microsecond, and hit the deck just before a hundred-mile-an-hour fastball zipped past his ear and clanged into the wire backstop. Had the pitch been another inch lower or a few miles an hour faster, he would have been beaned and, at that speed, possibly killed.”"

"“Be more than careful,” he told her. “Be totally paranoid. Err on the side of caution.”"

"“Would it be possible for somebody to hypnotize you into killing somebody?”"

"“maybe you were visited by… an angel,” Carl said. ““An angel dressed as a biker?” Tommy asked."

"“It was not the sense that something had been there. It was the sense that something was still there, palpable but not visible. A sense (and now he thought he was really losing his mind) that the forest was grieving, or that something in it was dying…a feeling, if he had to name it, that evil had been there.”"

"“It was times like these that she questioned the path she’d chosen—she wanted to do work that was important, that made a difference, and she was good at what she did, but she was still shocked and disheartened by the evil things people did to each other.”"

"Elizabeth. A killer. A sociopath. A human scorpion. And Cassidy had let her ride on her back."

"Without the safety of the flotation device, or the pool bottom beneath her feet, Makayla was suddenly drowning in fear."

"In a low voice Sara told them about going to the park, seeing a man, and then not paying much attention to him until suddenly he was pushing a gun into her ribs as she unlocked her front door. “He said he had to kill me or someone would kill him.”"